best music DVDs?

not including the residents, too obvious

and i already have em

quick stuff:

TAMI Show
Re-constructed Monterey Pop
DEvo's early videos
Kids Are Alright
there's some Newport Blues Festival footage from mid-1960's featuring fife and drum bands--killah
Gimme Shelter
Yardbirds cameo in the great movie Blow Up

thanks to all concerned re: this very useful string as i was commanded (who's yer daddy) to "surprise me with just one goddamn gift this year!" Roxy @ the Appolo should fufill that... uh, request.

how about a scott walker/walker brothers boot dvd, in my arms soon?

NP:
Music Machine

hello and thanks MB, actually the early Devo videos you mentioned above sound cool...any chance that i could work out something with you on that?

Before I buy, somebody review:
Roxy Music - the recent reunion vid
Sonic Youth - the recent live vid
Clash - the 3x London Calling
Damhned - Tiki Lounge

I'm interested to hear about the others as well, but I can speak to the Clash reissue. The DVD is pretty cool to watch, if for no other reason to see what a raving lunatic Guy Stevens was. The footage of the making of the record is pretty primitive, but it is fun. There's also some good recent interview material with the boys in the band, including Joe before he died. And while it's gratifying to see that Topper is still alive, he looks just terrible. Paul has held up remarkably well, however.

As for the rest of the reissue, I am unable to detect any difference in the remastered album. The rescued "Vanilla Tapes" on the 2nd disc are very lo-fi, as you might expect, and are pretty spotty. Some of the songs might just as well have stayed buried, just because they're so sloppy or half-formed. But on others, it's really interesting to hear how the song started out and then transformed for the final album (and the album versions are ALL better than the early versions, which isn't always the case). All in all, it's definitely a worthwhile purchase for a Clash fan.

I'll add another comment on this topic since I recently purchased the new Wire live CD and DVD called "Wire on the Box." The package has both a CD and a DVD of the same show and is thus somewhat redundant. I listened to the CD first and, as a stand-alone live album, I wasn't all that impressed, tho it is from their best era (1979, so post "Chairs Missing" and pre "154"). But when you see it all put together in the live setting on the DVD, it really works.

I saw Wire on their recent reunion tour last year or so and it was pretty cool. But seeing them in this setting, playing some of their best material (Mercy, French Film Blurred, Map Ref, A Touching Display, etc.) is pretty amazing. I'd always thought of Colin Newman's guitar contributions as being fairly minimal, but it's clear from this video that he plays a much more integral role in the music than I thought. He also had much more of a David Byrne-style stage presence than I would have guessed.

The show was filmed on a German television show and the audience's reactions to the band are hilarious. They're all seated and they politely clap after each number. Well, some of them do anyway - others look like they've never been more bored in their lives and cannot wait to get the hell out of there.

Yesterday I picked up the 'London Calling 25th Anniversary Legacy' 3x.
Unfortunately it's mindless repackaging in the vein of Story V.1, Story V.2, and Singles . The packaging is low-quality digipack with a weak spine (mine shows sign of wear after one use) and the discs are of low quality (the first DVD was defective, the CDs are not the qulaity of previous LC releases). The booklet consists of part of kcchg.org.uk's description of west London locations (vaguely related to London Calling), more of Pennie Smith's 1979 photos reproduced too small to discern in faux negative fashion, a fan newsletter of notes from 1979 and notes from the Clash website about the Vanilla Tapes. Complete shite. The Vanilla Tapes (disc #2) are likened to the Basement Tapes or Smile and the sticker calls them demos. They're actually shabby rehearsals of the band having a go at what they've just written and recorded on cassette, as bands always do. They have no noise reduction, no mixing, and little mastering. There are better boots. The one worthwhile track is 'Where You Gonna Go (Soweto) in better quality than boots. Why did they bother with DVD (disc #3) if not to take advantage of technological quality? Take a lesson from Jimmy Page's cleanup efforts for the audio (+ the 2x Zep DVD costs less than this). The DVD consists of a short interview with band friend Kosmo Vinyl interspersed with a few B&W clips in the studio and lots of footage already released on Westway to the World. This could have been a Quicktime extra. The good part is two extra live tracks. The sticker on London Calling in 1980 bragged '2xLPs for the price of one'. I guess this philosophy no longer pertains to this release. The original version of Black Market Clash remains unreleased and the true missing album is Rat Patrol from Fort Bragg (probably the next product though now I think it will be flubbed as a low-quality $30 rehash of Combat Rock). The missing DVD is Rude Boy.

The Roxy Music DVD is very good. Well worth purchasing for a Roxy fan. Ferry, Mackay, Manzanera and Thompson are all in fine form, and the musicians they assembled are all up to the material presented. Good set list, ranging from "Remake/Remodel" and "Virginia Plain" to material from *Avalon*. The videography is excellent; it doesn't rely on the quick cutting that's become all too typical of music video. Recommended.



Post Edited (11-09-04 15:01)

Remind of the title and I'll order it up. I've shopped half a dozen stores that have neither heard of it nor have it listed in their catalogs. Must be an import, eh?

Roxy Music - *Live at the Apollo*. I'm pretty sure it's a North American release. As I type this, amazon.com, buy.com and half.com all have it in stock.

My favorite music dvd's:
The Last Waltz
Stop Making Sense
I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
The Filth and the Fury
Don't Look Back

speaking of hot videos--

scroll down this link

[www.thebutterscotchthreshold.com]

and check out the awesome bostonian remains on sullivan; other nuggets (no pun intended) include devo, the great earl hooker, and a pretty funny educational video on penises (in the spirit of x-mas, of course.)

and negativeland's always interesting stuff.

NP:
the new detroit cobras

merry kwamaz

recently? I actually liked the Clash DVD that came with "London Calling"

Dead Boys-Live at CBGB 1977
Screamers (on Target... great early west coast new wave/punk band)
Wire-On The Box ('79 show)